Last Post headed for the door, it had been too much.All the yelling and screaming, the carrying on, had pushed Last Post to the limit.It knew that when it left, there would be no coming back, and that was OK. Time for a change anyways.Last Post twisted the knob and the orange peeled door creaked open. It walked through and into the muddy street beyond.

I can still remember this like it was yesterday, but it's been years since I'd seen Last Post.I guess one never knows, I could be out in the territory someday and maybe up on a ridge,..The silhouetted form of Last Post, galloping towards me,..A man can dream.

Again, a suggestive title, although taken from the same book that bears my namesake, and appropriate only insofar as my experiences, without parallel context, have left me bruised. I guess a good jumping off point for this entry is just to quickly note that I am extremely tired of being mistreated. The mistreatment is broad in its scope and has gotten worse since I relocated from NYC to Washington, DC (I'm convinced this city truly represents the worst aggregate that America has to offer - for those who come down here with good intentions, and are good people, the city brings the worst out in them the way an abusive relationship does). I find myself trying to find the appropriate party to exact retribution on for my mistreatment, and this has led me to screaming at Comcast representatives, my building manager, law students, etc.

The more I lash out, the more I start to come to terms with the uneasiness associated with this mistreatment and also explore the sources of it. For example, my cable company is the worst possible. You can read almost anywhere how horrible their aspects of service are, so I won't bore you. But the part that makes me most upset before during and after my altercations with their telephone representatives is the clinical detachment they can somehow keep from the problems that are clearly happening. It would be one thing if the Comcast representative I spoke with was personally responsible for these problems - it would be natural to defend his or her own actions. The same goes for my building manager, who is able to talk endlessly about "policy" and how "we can't" do one thing or another, when she makes the decisions - there is no "we" or a straightforward "policy", and there is no "can't", it is a personal decision so "won't" would be the operative word.

Then, last night I was out with some law students from AU when I got into an altercation with one of them. Informative in its own right, this altercation was actually subsumed for the purposes of this discussion by the civil conversation I had with another student. It was amazing to learn how completely enveloped by vocational thinking that a group of people can get. We're not born law students, or with any other label for that matter. Therefore, it was troublesome to have to actually ask if the person I was talking to was more than just his chosen profession, in order to move our hypothetical discussion past the point of industry analysis. Also troublesome, but moreso just as an affront was the conflict I had, which involved me being insulted for not embracing as above reprehension the field of corporate law.

So maybe the operative term is not clinical detachment. If people are truly this connected to their line of work, then there is nothing to detach. Considering how institutionalized the value systems are that are tied to most jobs people have, this is a truly scary concept.

hillbillypharmacist:Again, a suggestive title, although taken from the same book that bears my namesake, and appropriate only insofar as my experiences, without parallel context, have left me bruised. I guess a good jumping off point for this entry is just to quickly note that I am extremely tired of being mistreated. The mistreatment is broad in its scope and has gotten worse since I relocated from NYC to Washington, DC (I'm convinced this city truly represents the worst aggregate that America has to offer - for those who come down here with good intentions, and are good people, the city brings the worst out in them the way an abusive relationship does). I find myself trying to find the appropriate party to exact retribution on for my mistreatment, and this has led me to screaming at Comcast representatives, my building manager, law students, etc.

The more I lash out, the more I start to come to terms with the uneasiness associated with this mistreatment and also explore the sources of it. For example, my cable company is the worst possible. You can read almost anywhere how horrible their aspects of service are, so I won't bore you. But the part that makes me most upset before during and after my altercations with their telephone representatives is the clinical detachment they can somehow keep from the problems that are clearly happening. It would be one thing if the Comcast representative I spoke with was personally responsible for these problems - it would be natural to defend his or her own actions. The same goes for my building manager, who is able to talk endlessly about "policy" and how "we can't" do one thing or another, when she makes the decisions - there is no "we" or a straightforward "policy", and there is no "can't", it is a personal decision so "won't" would be the operative word.

Then, last night I was out with some law students from AU when I got into an altercation with one of them. Informative in its own right, this altercation was actually subsumed for the purpose ...

This is an example of a phrase my friend and I coined: "intellectual laziness"

Some background:

Mathematics is economy of thought, is it easier to remember a table full of numbers or the formula that generated that table.It follows that laziness is economy of motion. We do not want to work hard, therefore we find a more efficient way of doing the same thing.Mathematics might be considered to be a crowning achievement of human beings. Very few critters have the capacity that we have for abstract thought.Therefore by inference laziness might also be considered an achievement.

To a point. Beyond that point and laziness becomes counter productive. Intellectual laziness falls in this domain. It is easier to say "no" (or better yet to blame "no" on someone/something) than it is to find a solution.

Entropy is a cruel master, you can not win, give up and enjoy the ride.